1 . Natural disasters may claim thousands of lives or destroy millions of homes. What can we learn from disasters?

Sometimes, there are no real answers. Everyone has lost something and someone, and they keep on asking what they have done to deserve this cruel fate. It’s okay to hold on to these questions, but no matter how hard and painful it is, you should keep moving, breathing and living.     1    

Even strangers can teach you kindness. There may be millions of selfish people in the world.     2     There is still kindness out there, waiting to be discovered. You will find it everywhere, at the most unexpected places—even among the wastelands left by the disaster.

Family is everything. Sometimes we forget to love our family, just because we’re too busy with our own lives.     3     We will not realize their value until we arrive at an empty house, an abandoned and forgotten place that you once called “home”.

    4     Sure, reality can be harsh and unforgiving but it doesn’t mean that we should blame ourselves and feel like a victim forever. We have to strive and thrive; we have to fight and do whatever it takes to resist and rise up. Not everyone will have a happy ending or an interesting plot, but we can always decide how to write the ending.

Every day of your life should be spent loving and living. Don’t be angry at the world for letting you live an unbearable life of heartbreaks and frustrations.     5     So just love deep and love hard. Live as if it’s your only chance to find the happiness that you deserve.

2 . It was an evening when my parents and I ventured across Nemeiben Lake, in Northern Saskatchewan. This _______ lake, which expanded 26 miles across, had a reputation as being the best fishing and tourist resort in the province.

The sun was _______ behind the dark rolling _______ and we set off. Soon the lake seemed to be deserted _______ the sky began to darken, looking much _______ in the darkness, which made me feel a little nervous.

And then suddenly the boat _______ something with such force that we all fell _______ in our seats. My father went to the back and found the water was now _______ in at a very fast rate.

The overloaded boat was now deep in water. The _______ was now to come. With our life jackets ________ , we waited as the boat sank deeper into the water. The biting cold was more terrifying than anyone could have ________ .

A strong wind blew ________ the lake and the strong waves carried us off into the night. I knew that ________ was near. Then suddenly, something quite ________ happened. A shadow appeared up ahead. I blinked in   ________ . A beautiful large diving-bird landed only feet from my grasp. It stayed calmly by my side and all of a sudden I didn’t feel ________ any more. Deep in my heart, I knew everything would be ________ .

When a fisherman found us the following ________ , our body temperatures were only twenty-four degrees after we had been in the water for 13 hours.

As I lay in the hospital bed ________ , I thanked God for all his mercy and for the guardian angel that ________ me. Anyway, that was an unforgettable experience.

3 . Ten years ago when I was diagnosed with a serious illness, my first thought was, “Why me?” And this thought _______ me throughout my journey. It wasn’t until I was _______ enough to look back that I realized how much of my life was _______ by my illness not in a bad way.

Being _______ for our past experiences and _______ can be a hard thing to do. We sometimes wish events in our past could be _______ so we could start a new life. But without these events, we wouldn’t learn, change and grow.

The day I _______ this was volunteering with my boyfriend. A friend’s wife came up to me and asked me how school was, _______ I said I didn’t like it that much. She then _______ by saying, “Well, if you hadn’t gone, you wouldn’t have met him.” and pointed at my ________.

This really opened my eyes, and after I left I started seeing everything in my life in this ________. If I hadn’t gone to that school, I would never have met my future husband. If I hadn’t battled ________ the illness, I wouldn’t have found my true ________. At first I didn’t see how my illness could have ever been a blessing. But when I looked at it as an experience for me, I started to see that I had a lot to be thankful for.

I grew closer to my mother while ________. I gained knowledge about myself that I could ________ gain through struggle, and learned how to take care of my wants and needs in a way that made me happy.

6 . Accents are an important part of our identity. An accent gives clues about who we are, and the community we belong to or wish to belong to.     1    

What is the difference between accents and pronunciation?

Accents are about localized ways of speaking a language. A French person may speak English flawlessly (完美无瑕地), just with a French accent.     2     However, pronunciation is something that — as a learner— you can get right or wrong. If your pronunciation is correct, you can communicate effectively with others whatever your accent is.

    3    

If you think back historically people were much more localized with generation after generation of families living in the same small villages and few people traveled out of that area during their lifetimes. So over many generations differences in accent emerged and became very distinct to particular areas. Mountainous villages that are not easily accessible often develop very strong and distinctive accents.

How important is it to get an accent right?

If you’re moving to a certain part of a country, you might want to integrate better with your new community.     4     That’s because it shows a sense of belonging to the community you are trying to fit in with.

How to improve your accent?

    5     And then learners should consider which sounds exist in the language you’re learning and then spend some time in front of the mirror practicing moving your tongue and mouth to get those new and different sounds. And learners should be aware of stress and tone, which can sometimes even change the meaning of words.

I’m Li Hua, a Senior 3 student. Faced with great pressure in life, I’m writing to seek your help.

Looking forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Li Hua

8 . On Christmas Day in 2012, when I was fourteen, I didn’t get a single Christmas present. That wasn’t a _________. It was what I had _________. A week before Christmas, I decided that _________ presents, I wanted donations to buy presents for the children in the local orphanage (孤儿院).

When I told my family and friends about my plan, there were a lot of _________ but also support. However, it was only on Christmas Day that the reality hit me. When my baby sisters jumped out of bed, singing carols and opening presents, I lay there feeling _________ and making a list of all the things I really wanted for Christmas that year. I realized I had made a huge mistake.

As I _________ on the door of the orphanage that morning, I felt _________ because I realized how unprepared I was for what was _________. I even had the _________ of dropping the bags of presents outside the orphanage and________. I almost did, but then a kind woman opened the door and smiled when she __________ me in. I was taken to a room full of children, and was __________ angry at how empty it felt. I wanted the room to be filled with __________instead of fear. I wanted to make these children smile but I was __________.

But then something happened. As the workers in the orphanage __________ presents, the __________ in the room changed. I could see the __________ in the eyes of the children and their bodies filled with hope. I __________ feeling so powerless. A little girl, Diana, ran up to me and __________ my legs. I didn’t know I was crying __________ she asked me, “Auntie, why are you crying?” This only made me cry more.

9 . Japanese automaker Toyota says it will team up with the country’s space agency to develop a vehicle called the Lunar Cruiser to explore the moon. The name comes from a popular Toyota vehicle called the Land Cruiser. The company said it plans to launch the vehicle in the late 2020s. After that, Toyota said the vehicle could assist people living on the moon by 2040 and could possibly be sent to Mars as well.

Takao Sato heads the company’s Lunar Cruiser project. He told The Associated Press the vehicle is based on the idea that people eat, work, sleep and communicate with others safely in cars. He hopes theLunar Cruiser can serve the same purpose in space. “We see space as an area for our once-in-a-century transformation, ” Sato said, “By going to space, we may be able to develop telecommunications and other technology that will prove valuable to human life. ”

Another company, Gitai Japan Inc., is partnering with Toyota to develop a robotic arm for the Lunar Cruiser. It will be designed to perform jobs such as carrying out inspections and maintaining the vehicle. The company said the arm will be built to work with different tools. These tools could be used to study the moon’s surface more closely.

Interest in space has been growing in Japan in recent years. Japanese space exploration company iSpace announced last April that it would transport an explorer belonging to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the moon in 2022. Japan’s iSpace will provide the lander to carry the UAE’s rover(探测器).

The company plans to launch the lander on a Falcon 9 rocket built by American company SpaceX. Japanese citizens followed the trip to space last year of billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. He spent 12 days aboard the International Space Station. Maezawa also plans in the future to orbit around the moon on a SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.

Toyota engineer Shinichiro Noda said he thinks the lunar project can extend the company’s tradition of serving customers to a place beyond Earth. He said Toyota currently has vehicles almost everywhere. “But this is about taking our cars to somewhere we have never been, ” Noda said.

10 . Zhang Fan, 36, a movie visual effects designer who returned to Beijing from New Zealand for work last year, was surprised by the improvement to the city’s air quality. “I remember the smell in the air and the frequent smoggy days before I left in 2013, after getting a job offer from a film company in New Zealand, ” he said. Last year, a Chinese company offered Zhang a more promising position, so he returned, saying that he could find more opportunities in his line of work in Beijing than elsewhere. In addition to rapid economic development in the Chinese capital, he said the most impressive change is the local air quality. “People discussed air pollution a lot when I was in Beijing previously. Now, it seems that the topic has disappeared completely, as every day is good in terms of air quality,” Zhang said. “The sky in Beijing these days is so clear. ”

On Jan. 4, the municipal authorities in Beijing announced a comprehensive success in improving air quality, with the city’s annual average concentration of PM2. 5 in the air, falling to 33 micrograms per cubic meter, and ozone (臭氧) concentration dropping to 149 mcg per cu m last year.

Yu Jianhua, spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau, said at a news conference, “This is a milestone for Beijing’s hard work in fighting air pollution and also means that the city has met its air quality target outlined in the 14th Five-Year Plan(2021-25) ahead of schedule. Beijing has demonstrated to the world over the past 20 years that a mega city with a rapidly increasing GDP, vehicle count, population and energy consumption can move forward to cut air pollution effectively. The PM2.5 reduction over the past few years has surpassed that of developed countries during the same period.

According to the Bureau, the city’s average concentration of PM2.5 dropped by 63 percent last year from 2013, an average annual reduction of about 8 percent. The city experienced 288 days of good air quality last year—up from 112 days in 2013—and just eight days of heavy air pollution. This achievement is clear to see and exciting, but it has not been easy work.